New Report Claims This Is Why Warner Bros. Didn’t Push ‘Justice League’ Back

I think it’s safe to say that Warner Bros. and DC’s epic team-up film had an extremely rough terrain on the road to the big screen. The sudden but completely understandable departure of Zack Snyder early on this year was looming over the film from the second it happen, and unfortunately, it resulted in a rushed and over-capacitated film that felt like it was spoofing its more serious tone at times. It wasn’t what most fans were hoping for, which has made many wonder why the film wasn’t push back to early 2018 with the obstacles it had to overcome.

I myself asked that very question as soon as I watched the film. The first thing I said when walking out of the theater was how insanely fast the pacing was. There were clear gaps between scenes and transition that didn’t make sense at time. It felt like the ultimate rough draft. And I wasn’t the only one who thought that. So why wouldn’t WB consider pushing the film? Did they? Would moving it a few months really hurt its box-office take? Well, according to a new report, the decision to either stick or move the release date came down to personal benefits for the heads of WB.

A new report from The Wrap claims that Justice League‘s release date came down to WB President Toby Emmerich and CEO Kevin Tsujihara wanting to “preserve their bonuses” that would come before Time Warner’s merge with AT&T. If the film would’ve been pushed, which is should have, their bonuses would have also been pushed to the end of next year, and as the article says, that became an issue because of their fear that “they might not still be at the studio.”

You’re kidding me, right? This can’t be true, can it? It’s yet just another example of WB putting too many hands in the kitchen and trying to control their product rather than letting their filmmakers do what they’re hired for. With reshoots being messier than normal because of Henry Cavill’s mustache, the recent news that WB mandated a runtime of under two hours and now this new development, fans (DC and general fans alike) are going to be fired up. It’s blatantly clear, like right in your face like Superman’s badly CGI’d face, that this film was thrown as fast as it possibly could be to its release date. It sucks.

With each passing day, it seems as if the future of the DCEU becomes slimmer and slimmer. The changing of the tide that seemed to be happening after Wonder Woman was very bright, but has now been muddled down by the underwhelming response and success of Justice League. Who would’ve ever thought we’d be sitting here two weeks after the release of a Justice League film talking about how the studio could lose up to $100 million dollars? With Wonder Woman 2 no doubt now being fast-tracked and the arrival of Aquaman next year, it’s highly unlikely that Justice League will kill the entire DCEU. Let’s just hope that everyone involved, mainly the studio executives, learn from the mistakes made over the past few years and we can all begin to love the idea of a DC cinematic universe.

What do you think of these shocking new developments? First of all, do you believe it could be true? If so, does it piss you off just as much as me? How did you fair with Justice League? Where do you see the DCEU going? Sound off below!